Crysis 2 GPU & CPU Performance Test

I think that Crytek really dropped the ball on this one from a technological standpoint. Here is my list of grievances:

1. The game only has DX9 support. That is a serious error on Crytek's part. The original Crysis supported DX10, for god's sake. DX9 is outmoded.

2. There are shitty textures everywhere.

3. The graphics options are incredibly limited, and changing them does not produce an appreciable difference in visual quality. Seriously, the lowest preset looks about as good as the highest. Turning the setting up only adds some shader anti-aliasing and pours on some ridiculous motion blur effects.

4. The blur effects are terrible. There is so much motion blur; it quickly becomes nauseating. The blur on the light sources is very unrealistic. It's almost as if Crytek knew that the graphics were going to be bad, so they attempted to hide the unsavory reality using excessive blur.

5. The faces look really bad.

6. The lighting is fake and overdone, just like the motion blur.

7. Environments are no longer destructible.

8. Object deformation effects are quite lackluster.

In my opinion, the game does not look good at all; it is a big step backward from the original Crysis, and it is absolutely smashed by true modern contenders like Just Cause 2, Metro 2033, and Battlefield Bad Company 2.

I'm playing with 30-40 FPS, game's very smooth and I didn't notice fps lag at all, not even when I'm doing multiplayer.

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it really depends. if you are used to playing all games at around 30 fps and crysis doesn't ever go beyond 30-40 then you probably won't notice any lag(playing games at a constant fps makes them seem less laggy).
if you usually play games around 60 fps and can't tell the difference between 30-60 fps, then i don't believe you ._.
i'm used to playing at 60 fps, so when i play at 30 fps, it is very noticeable, especially when the fps jumps between 30-60.
is it so hard to believe that people can see lag after 30 fps? after all, the human eye can see well past 30 fps.
is it so hard to believe that people notice the difference between 30 and 60 fps?

Steve, I dunno what I was thinking. 4GHz - 4.6GHz makes little if no difference to Crysis2, and even the AvP benchmark with crossfire enabled benefits very little from the extra 600MHz. Think I must have been confused between the CPU overclocking and when I was overclocking the GPUs slightly. Probably just overcome with the general performance increase in just about everything else when I moved to this new system.

Arris, you get the background flicker when you have your second 5850 CF'ed? I didn't have that until I enacted my 4th 5850, just goes to show what lousy support they launched this miserable console sequel with......i want my money back! LOL

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I get the flickering with 2 cards enabled. Must be something in the code that dislikes even numbers of cards

I am aware of Wasdie’s program and have used it, trouble is most of the tweakable settings break the game. Enabling MSAA for example destroys the image quality, makes the game look very washed out.

Arris said:
Steve, I dunno what I was thinking. 4GHz - 4.6GHz makes little if no difference to Crysis2, and even the AvP benchmark with crossfire enabled benefits very little from the extra 600MHz. Think I must have been confused between the CPU overclocking and when I was overclocking the GPUs slightly. Probably just overcome with the general performance increase in just about everything else when I moved to this new system.

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Hi Arris, yeah I have done huge amounts of CPU scaling testing in my time and you will find that at 4GHz there is literally no game that can max out a Core i7 processor.

I have an XFX 6870(OC to 950/1250) and I usually hover around 60 fps but the lowest I've seen it drop to is 38 fps. This is on Extreme settings with V sync on at 1920x1080.

Not sure if its my computers specs that are making a difference?
965BE @ 4ghz
8gb Corsair XMS3 1333mhz
Gigabyte 890GPA-UD3H

I don't believe I'm imagining things either.

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The benchmarks are of 1920x1200, you are running 1920x1080, so a few hundred thousand pixels less processing per frame. Are you using the same Catalyst version used for the testing? It's possible you have a better performing video driver.

There are many things that can influence your own results. You even mention that you have your card overclocked. Unless you are going to test at default clock and memory at same resolution with the same drivers it's pretty pointless to state your impression of what your cards performance is like and say you don't trust the benchmarks listed here. I too thought my card on my system was performing better than the benchmarks but really it wasn't. Also remember the frames per second listed are also an average.One drop to low fps can really drop your average.

I'm running 2x6970 at 1920x1200 with much more than Extreme settings (See Nebby's mods on the Cry2 thread at B3D) and I'm pegged at 60 fps with vsync on (60 Hz screen and proccy is 2600k at 4.5GHz). These numbers are much higher than reported here.

To do this I am using RadeonPro to force the Bioshock Crossfire profile and D3D Triple-buffering.
My guess is that this modification would up the 6990 results.

Oh I hear ya.
I noticed the poor textures first thing I did when playing the leaked version at a friends house for roughly 10 minutes.
Then I chalked it up to being a leaked beta, and that the full version would use high resolution textures.
But nooo, it's very easy to see for yourself, in the first mission you go up to a wooden door, the first one is open a little so you might not notice it, but then you enter an area and kill 3 guys, after that is the same door again, but now locked.
So you go up to it and press "use" (since it's the logical thing to do, and yea, my screenshot below really tells it all.)
This is at 1600x1200 "Very High" quality
In the Dosbox Window I am playing Duke Nukem 3D, which looks better to you?

I do not understand how you people got theese results nor how you came to the conclusion that this DX9 bull is as demmanding than the original Crysis which you did say?

Which in FACT on my desk tested with 4 video differnet video cards it is not as demmanding as the original and that was the whole point this tim around !!!!

The original was meant to be a bear that few then current cards could even play, while this round Is basically a console port they are going to tweak along the way, and this was done so on purpose to SELL, SELL, SELL, to the masses and SELL it has on XBOX 360 and PS3.

From my own testing and many sites on the web such as Toms Hardware, crysis 2 is in no way as demmanding as the original. My HD 5770 struggled with the original across the board, yet it plays Crysis 2 quite nicely. Also the results you got with AMD 6xxxx cards puzzles me and defies what I have on my desk.

My P2 1055t overclocked mildly to 3.73 with an HD 6950 and it laughs at this game easily getting 60 FPS on Ultra Super Dooper high or whatever they call it today!

I know what you mean, why bother? its not even close. The textures in Crysis 2 are absolutely horrendous. Not to mention, this isn't even a corridor shooter...its a phone booth shooter.

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I could not have said it any better myself. They took Crysis and transformed it into Call of Duty: Nanosuit edition. They even made a Call of Duty game caliber game engine to worsen the visual fidelity.

Arris said:
"The benchmarks are of 1920x1200, you are running 1920x1080, so a few hundred thousand pixels less processing per frame. Are you using the same Catalyst version used for the testing? It's possible you have a better performing video driver.

There are many things that can influence your own results. You even mention that you have your card overclocked. Unless you are going to test at default clock and memory at same resolution with the same drivers it's pretty pointless to state your impression of what your cards performance is like and say you don't trust the benchmarks listed here. I too thought my card on my system was performing better than the benchmarks but really it wasn't. Also remember the frames per second listed are also an average.One drop to low fps can really drop your average. "

Ahhh I see now. Noob mistake on my part for thinking it was on 1920x1080. This makes way more sense now. Thanks

In my opinion, this game is outstanding. I'll admit I was expecting an "on rails" FPS, and, although it is to an extent, it doesn't feel like it. It reminds me of the COD games in that respect. As I was playing this I was reminded of HL2, which is a good thing. As far the graphics and textures go, I thought they looked excellent. I didn't stand still long enough to admire the textures of a door, I was busy playing the game.
So what if it's "only" using dx9, it could use dx7 for all I care. Maybe it would look even better if it was using dx11 but how many gamers would kick off saying it's a return to a game which no system can play - Crysis 1?
These guys are in business to make money, not necessarily to push the boundaries of cutting edge tech, while alienating those that can't afford to buy the latest equipment to run it.

As far as "anything less than 40fps" goes, as far as I'm aware, the human eye only notices lag when the frame rate drops below 30 ish so anything above that is pointless. When I was playing this on my setup I didn't once notice any lag (extreme settings, everything on full @ 1440x900) I didn't have any FPS meters running though, I was too busy enjoying the game

Also, no one has mentioned the music. I don't usually play a game with music on as I find it can distract me from hearing what's being said or the footsteps of some bad guy just around the corner. However, this music seemed to scale excellently with the curent situation you were in - from quiet, light instrumental peices when things were moving slowly, to heavy, almost industrial set peices when thing went crazy.

Anyway, I thought it was an excellent game and when (if) they bring out a dx11 patch I'll play though it again.

Cheers,

Steve.

PS, honestly, who cares which company has the fastest card/cpu/ram. Just get what you can afford to play the games at the settings your happy with. Life's to short to be a fanboy/girl

Just beat the single player. My i7 950 @ 4ghz, SLI GTX465 and 6Gb DDR3 1333mhz got 60fps (v-sync) through 95% of the game. Some parts where the action got ridiculous and places where the game loaded I got no lower than 30fps at Hardcpre. Honestly I didn't even try Extreme because I was content with Hardcore. The single player was thriller, but the original satisfied me much more. And I still believe the first one looks better.

It's just amazing how many people have pirated this piece of software getting the graphic settings all wrong (you know it's high, very high and extreme in the properly released game). Way to go guys. At least don't whine it sucks, you have no right to do it since you didn't pay a penny for it.

I wouldn't pay good money for this console crap on the PC, I'll play COD if I want a linear FPS experience with crap DX9 GFX, obvously this way becuase CR2 is a direct console port. Horrible game on the PC.